We do not know the real reasons for the suspension of ordinations in the diocese of Toulon. It is, however, symptomatic of the tensions and difficulties that have arisen for more than twenty years in the Church of France.
From the outside, we can understand several things. In the first place that clerics (priests, deacons) do not have a ministry in absolute terms: the faithful with whom they will exercise it are part of the ordination. Not that, as I often saw applied thirty years ago, Christian communities are asked for their opinion on the aptitude (that is the precise word) of candidates for the ministry. Suspending ordinations instead means that future clerics must come to terms with the people to whom they might be sent.
→ READ. Case of the diocese of Toulon: what we know
Consequently, the relationship between the clerics and the faithful must integrate the vision of an agreement to be constantly established between personal desires and pastoral necessity – that is, the needs of the group. The second point is that ordination is not only of the order of an essence – the priest – she raises too of the relationship. Rome therefore reminds the responsible bishop that one cannot imagine “inventing” priests without taking into account the needs of the communities of the faithful.
The relational vision of ministry
This leads us to a question about training: what do we teach future clerics of this vision? relational of their eventual ministry? In this regard, liturgical questions hold a decisive place. They crystallize the perceptions of each other because the liturgy determines the symbolic positions of the actors in ecclesial life.
Ensuring a Sunday liturgy is not only deploying worship, however ostentatious it may be, it is above all reactivating the relations which associate clerics and laity around their Lord. Relations which necessarily take into account the place of the faithful in the world, knowing that the divergences between the progress of the world and the spiritual pilgrimage of the Church are accentuated. This point is rarely brought to light in debates on liturgical forms, unfortunately.
And, still in terms of formation, what does it mean to form pastors whose cultures of origin, with all that entails of imaginations and anthropological representations, differ profoundly from those of the native diocesan priests and of the faithful?
The emergence of a vocation
By pursuing this reflection, we are led to reflect on the conditions for the emergence of a “vocation”. I remember that there are several. Deacons are generally approached by priests; proven men are asked (viri probati) if they agree to assume the diaconal ministry. Priests today are heard in their intimate desire to become one; what is called “vocation”.
The desire to become a priest conditions their entry into formation. As for the bishops, they are selected “on file”, their acceptance of the charge being the last stage of the process (many candidates refuse). The Church therefore has a panoply of means to ensure the renewal of clerics.
However, for priests, whatever one may have, the mechanism of vocation is no longer reliable. On the one hand, as we have just seen, it does not make it possible to ensure that the ministerial priesthood includes a relational dimension among the candidates. On the other hand, the drying up of entries to the seminary (despite the many prayers to the Holy Spirit!) shows that “it no longer works”.
take a step back
What to conclude from this ? No doubt that Rome is very fortunately coming to ask us to take a step back, to answer a central question. Not this classic one: “Which priests do we want? », which always ends up leading to the conflicts we know today. Some wanting priests who recall “sound doctrine” (which one? of which century?), others brandishing the conciliar experience which freed them from a binding past. The important question would rather be: “What priests do we need for tomorrow? »
Because, by focusing on “backsliding” or on “serious infidelities” to tradition through “progressivism and relativism”, we lose sight of the fact that the Bible speaks to us of a God who always envisages “tomorrow”, without backtracking possible.